Original and Bess

LUMLEY Castle has been staging Elizabethan banquets for exactly 40 years; Jim Cowper’s been there since the start. Part of the history, near enough.

Back then the 600-year-old castle near Chester-le-Street was still a student hall of residence; back then it cost just £3 to live, however briefly, like a lord.

“It was quite a lot of money in those days. Some people had to save up,” says Jim.

The price may have changed – it’s now £35 – and so might the detail.

The food and the format, however, seem little altered by the fearful passage of time.

There’s a song at the end about stirring up the pudding, the festive suggestion that it might be plum duff. You’d still bet a ducat to a dowry that it’s lemon syllabub – it’s been lemon syllabub every night for 40 years – and so, of course, it proves.

“It’s tradition,” says one of the Ladies of the Court of Lumley.

Jim was a 22-year-old travel agent with British Caledonian at Newcastle airport and a member of Chesterle- Street Amateur Operatic Society.

Lumley, planning what they termed an historical production, advertised for cast members in a local paper.

“I remember the auditions, a snowy day in February. We had to sing a short song and that was about it. A lot of the ladies were amateur operatics, too.”

For 13 years he was a herald, promoted in 1984 to tub-thumping, stave-bearing, ceremony-mastering chamberlain, or on high days to Henry VIII. Last winter he walked the four miles from his home in Chester-le-Street when the roads became impassable.

Like the snow, the show must go on.

The 21st Century website promotes the evenings as “a magnificent reminder of a bygone age of chivalry and honour”. But, like the first Elizabethans, doesn’t the second generation sometimes become a little boisterous?

“Well, sometimes we might delicately try to suggest that if they don’t like what’s happening, the bar’s still open out the back, but mostly it’s just high spirits.

“There are always some nights when you think ‘Oh my God, what am I doing here?’ but at the end you usually have a sense of achievement.

“It’s nice when they appreciate the ladies singing. Sometimes they don’t but that’s about the only problem.

It’s difficult because they’re enjoying themselves in their own way, but they’re disturbing other people.”

His desktop globe-trotting over – he retired from the travel agency four years ago – he also acts as MC at Lumley Castle weddings and has occasional parts in murder mystery nights. He may not have seen the world, but he knows every inch of Lumley Castle, now operated by a hotel group but still owned by the Earl of Scarborough.

“I suppose, like every other singer, I’d like to have played Covent Garden, but I’ve been very happy here.

It’s a nice, enjoyable, good fun night out. I’m not sure if I’ll go on very much longer, I’ve my 91-year-old mother to look after, but I’ve enjoyed almost every minute of it.”

BESS foot forward, we’re called from the bar on the stroke of 8pm. Fine and dandy, Jim looks perfectly the part.

“We can’t hear you,” someone shouts.

“You would if you’d shut up for a minute,” mutters the chamberlain, scripted or otherwise.

First to be summoned is “The noble household of Stanley Medical Centre”, followed apace by the noble household of New Seaham Primary School.

All are given a bib. If not quite best bib and tucker, the heavyweight “baron” is wearing his best jeans.

What might be the theme song appears early: “For tonight we’ll merry, merry be, tomorrow we’ll be sober.”

It’s a special Christmas production, the halls duly and delightfully decked. Mostly the diners are youthful.

If the Elizabethan era really was the late Middle Ages we might just, only just qualify.

True to form, there’s bench seating, not recommended for bad backs.

Soon everyone’s joining arms and swaying along, bierkeller meets banqueting hall.

As ever, the gowned ladies of the court double as waitresses and chorus.

There’s a Dame inexplicably called Camilla and – Oh yes – there’s Cinderella. One or two of the women on the next table might be auditioning for the Ugly Sisters.

As always there’s mead and wine, as always a first course of vegetable soup – very good soup – supped from the bowl and mopped up with bread.

“You’ve heard of Lorna Doone,” says Dame Camilla. “This is her cousin, Hoy it doon.”

The second course is a smidgeon of fish pie, served from a shell and eaten only with a knife. “My mother would come back to haunt me, eating from a knife,” says the Lady of Our House. We briefly wonder if the Stanley Medical Group might make a speciality of lacerated tongues.

The spare ribs have plenty about them, followed – another 40-year favourite – by chicken with baked potato and salad.

Jim had recalled that once diners were issued only with a dagger, might have thought about Macbeth but would never breathe the name, supposed that for health and safety reasons they now had to use knife and fork.

Health and safety, he said, had also decreed that they could no longer take salt and pepper from bowls – “too many fingers” – and must instead find something from the castle cellars.

In the first respect he was mistaken.

There are still no forks, so that when someone asks for a finger bowl, a brief alarm arises.

The best-jeans baron is talking to his guests. “Are yuz enjoying yersels?” he says. It’s probably Elizabethan for “What fettle.”

There’s a splendid piper, panto fun, Twelve Days of Christmas, communal carols – whatever else, it’s certainly not Silent Night – a dance to the music of timelessness. “You can tell the teachers,” says the Lady, “they’re the ones who know all the actions to Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer.”

The formalities end at half past ten, a disco thereafter transporting the young uns back to the newest golden age. No time like the present, we make our excuses and leave.